9.

The howling wind blew sand into the boy's eyes. He knelt there in daze among the mountain of lifeless bodies, unaware of the people around cleaning up after the massacre. His legs were numb, and so were his palms from his fingernails digging in. Teardrops fell like scattered rain onto the back of his hands.

"Eren. We're leaving."

"No." Said Eren obstinately. He refused to look at the man. Grief and enmity had overpowered fear. He was no longer terrified of anything.

For a few moments, the man let him be. Then a powerful grasp pulled him to his feet. Eren's entire body shook from repulsion and abhorrence.

"No!" The boy cried, "Lemme go! I'm not leaving him!"

The man did not listen to his cries of refusal. He simply threw Eren over his shoulder. Upside down, Eren saw the man pick something up from the ground. He realized that something was what was left of Armin. Aghast, Eren let the man carry the both of them deeper and deeper into the woods, until they were beneath a large elm tree.

Eren was thrown off the man somewhat brutally, and had to roll around the grass before he could stand again. Confused and angry, he saw Levi pick up a shovel. For a split second, he thought the man was going to hit him with it. Yet Levi merely started digging at the roots of the tree.

Eren watched him closely. His cape was askew, and his jacket no longer spotless. His injured hand had been poorly wrapped around by bandages daubed with blood. The blood blotches on his slightly hunched back were blinding. His movements were stagnant, the limp on his left leg becoming more and more obvious as he plummeted the shovel into the Earth. Soon, a small hole appeared and Levi started to set Armin's body slowly into the ground.

"What are you doing?" Eren asked shrilly. The boy didn't understand this at all. His tiny fingers grabbed onto Levi's sleeve and tried to get him to let Armin down. The man had already taken away his best friend. He wasn't going to allow him to put Armin in a hole!

Levi's eyes were tired. "Let go."

"N-No!" Tears began to cascade down the boy's cheeks without his consent.

For a short while, they were stuck in an impasse. It wasn't until a small warm hand slid into Eren's did the startled boy withdrew his grasp on Levi.

"It's called a burial." Mikasa said softly in Eren's ear. "To let him sleep." There were tear stains on her ashen face.

Eren's lower lip trembled. "But it's so cold…down there…"

The boy needn't have worried, though. Levi had already taken off his green cloak and wrapped it around Armin. Eren felt a little better now that he couldn't see Armin's missing body parts. He watched silently as Levi gently placed Armin down and reloaded the grave with fresh dirt. As the last corner of the grave was filled, Eren finally came to accept the harsh truth that his friend was gone.

Forever.

When he was younger, he had been taken to places like this by adults he didn't know. They pointed to the Earth and told him that his parents lay beneath it. How could they have, though? Eren had thought. He had just seen them the day before. They had a luxurious supper because it was his birthday. How could they be lying in the ground? It didn't make sense.

For days beyond, Eren had waited for them to come home. He waited on the doorsteps as nights fell and suns rose. He waited until he was too tired and hungry to keep his consciousness. He didn't understand at all. Didn't his parents love him? Didn't they miss him? Why won't they come home?

It wasn't until the villagers found him passed out on the street did he get sent to the orphanage.

His parents never came back.

Eren had stared at the clear sky for countless nights and wondered which star was his mother. Sometimes it was hard to distinguish which one was the brightest. He slowly came to the terms that his mother was in the heavens, and maybe father was with her.

But now he understood. The ugly truth had never been so clarified. His parents did not become stars. Nor are they looking down on him. They laid under the dirt, cold and alone, like Armin does now, a broken, unwanted toy.

…

…

…

"Eren. Come here."

Eren ignored the man and kept his distance from him. He hadn't wanted to leave the orphanage; nor had he wanted to leave Armin behind. But he was given no choice. The man had disregarded his unwillingness and hurried them away from the bloodbath aftermath of the war. Eren didn't understand why they had to run away. The battle had already been fought, and they had already lost.

"Don't make me hurt you." Levi said coldly.

Eren shuffled his feet until he came to the brink of the lake where Levi knelt. Hastily, Levi stripped him of his clothes and started to scrub the boy's thin arms to rid of the muck and blood. He rubbed until Eren's skin turned pinkish under the opaque moonlight.

The boy stood abjectly in the crisp waters, hanging his head in obedience. He seemed to have lost all energy.

Levi heaved a small sigh as he started to wash Eren's hair. He didn't know how it came to this. This turn of events had left the boy so laden with heavy grief that his thin shoulders sagged under the weight of it.

Levi hadn't wanted this. He barely had time to properly bury the other kid before he heard hooves of the horses carrying the Military Police. If they had recognized Eren for who he was, they would have taken the boy away.

Yet why did that concern him at all? The boy was a prisoner; an experiment at most. Nothing more.

"…Why?"

Levi paused as the single syllable left the boy's lips. Eren had squeezed his eyes shut to keep tears from falling. His body was shaking, creating tiny ripples around him.

He knew what the boy was asking. And he knew it would come sooner or later.

"…He was going to die." Levi replied calmly.

"But that wasn't your call!" Eren shouted, batting away Levi's hand in his hair.

Levi looked at the boy unemotionally. The obvious fury the kid carried did not sway him. "This is war, Eren. If you're closer to death than life, no one can save you. Only a selfish fool would choose a long and painful death for a friend. …Now hold still."

Eren sniffed resentfully as Levi washed the bubbles from his hair. He didn't care about the logic. He wasn't even sure what "selfish" meant. All he knew was Armin had been taken away from him. He was angry with the titans for being at the orphanage. He was angry with the nuns for not protecting Armin. He was angry with Levi for putting that blade into Armin's heart. But above all else, he was angry with himself for being the same creature that tore Armin apart.

Levi dabbed at the boy's face with a handkerchief roughly to clean the blood and tears. Yet the tears never ceased to stop.

"…Can you fix me?" The boy asked between sobs, his shoulders shaking violently in complete defeat.

Levi froze for a second, not comprehending the boy's intentions.

"Can you?" Eren whimpered again.

"…Fix what?"

"I don't want to be a t-titan anymore…"

Levi's eyes widened slightly at the stifled confession of a grieving child. The hatred that he had expected from the boy did not take place. The animosity and disgust the boy held was for himself, which made his agony a thousand times more heart-aching than it already was.

The tears, the affliction, and the weak wail of dolor awoke the empathy Levi thought he had buried long ago. It wasn't his place to console the boy; nor was it his responsibility. Yet his stern face softened all the same.

"There's nothing to fix." He finally informed resolutely, "…You are not a monster."

The pearly moonlight bounced off their beaten bodies, forging shadows of indifference on the translucent waves. The smothered sobs indicated otherwise, and each cry of mourning was like a toxic thorn on the heart of stone the man once owned.

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